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Remembering
T he 1967 Riot

I

Berl Falbaum

TOP LEFT: The
author and Detroit
Mayor Jerome P.
Cavanagh RIGHT:
President Lyndon
Johnson meets with
top leaders about
the riots in Detroit
in 1967.

22

July 20 • 2017

t was about 1 a.m. on the third day of the
riot when Detroit Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh
returned to his office on the 11th floor of the
City County Building.
I was chief of the Detroit News City-County
Bureau, and I saw him come in from my office
about 20 yards down the hall. I walked over to his
office. The door was open and he waved me in.
He went to a back room, mixed two drinks and
handed one to me.
It was not what Cavanagh said early that morn-
ing that was important. What was noteworthy
was the pain on his face.
This man was in agony. His face reflected a
mixture of anger, bewilderment, unfairness, con-
fusion and helplessness. He was justified in his
feelings.
After all, for six years, since he was elected
mayor at the age of 33 in 1961, he received
national accolades for his progressive policies.
All predicted a bright political future. Frequently,
he was compared to JFK, whose photo hung on
a wall in Cavanagh’s office. Detroit reveled in the
fame of its young leader.
He served, simultaneously, as president of
the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National
League of Cities, the first time a mayor held the
top job of the two organizations at the same time.
Cavanagh had responded to the frustrations
of the black community with liberal policies. He
worked diligently to integrate the almost totally
white police department.
It was evident that morning that the mayor
was having troubling grasping what had hap-
pened under his watch. It wasn’t supposed to be
like that. But it was like that.
While he may not have had an answer to the
question of “why” it happened, he knew the city
— and he — had failed.
As he said: “Today we stand amidst the ashes
of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what
we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot.
It was not enough.”

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As cities burned throughout the country,
Detroit was expected to be an exception. Then,
without warning, the city exploded following
a raid of a blind pig at 12th and Clairmount
Sunday, July 23, 1967. Cavanagh’s hopes for the
city were dashed, and his political career was, like
the city, in ashes.
Not only did Detroit burn, but the five-day riot
was the worst in the country’s history: 43 dead,
almost 1,200 injured, 7,200 arrested, 500 stores
looted and 412 buildings destroyed. Damage was
estimated at between $40-$45 million ($292-$328
million in today’s dollars).
What might have been the mayor’s most can-
did comments about the riot came in an inter-
view conducted with Cavanagh by officials of
the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Oral History
Collection on March 22, 1979, about seven
months before Cavanagh died of an apparent
heart attack at age 51.
In the 73-page transcript, Cavanagh admits he
did not immediately realize the extent of the riot,
stating Sunday afternoon publicly, “I think this
thing is under control.” Gov. George Romney did
not have “any realization of how vast this thing
was either,” the mayor said.
The mayor became more concerned after
reporters warned him about the riot’s fero-
ciousness, telling his police commissioner, Ray
Girardin, “Everything we have, we have to throw
in out there.
“But,” he said, “by that point, it was too late.
Mobilizing a police department on a hot Sunday
morning is almost like Pearl Harbor Day.”
He and Romney agreed to call up the National
Guard, but by the time the Guard arrived Sunday
night, “the thing was a mess … it was very bad.”
With the riot spreading, Cavanagh suggested
asking for federal troops, and he called Vice
President Hubert Humphrey at about midnight.
Ramsey Clark, U.S. attorney general, told
Romney, “You will have to certify that there’s an
insurrection and you can’t handle it.”

Romney, a Republican, was running for presi-
dent, and he wanted to consider how that would
affect him politically. Cavanagh said he told
Romney, “I don’t give a damn what has to be cer-
tified. Let’s get those federal troops in. Don’t play
games.”
After continued haggling, appropriate language
was developed; Cavanagh signed off sometime
around 8 a.m. Monday morning.
The troops from the 82nd and 101st
Airborne Divisions arrived that day in Mount
Clemens, along with Cyrus Vance, deputy sec-
retary of defense, and General John Lathrop
Throckmorton.
Cavanagh, Romney, Vance and Throckmorton
toured the riot area in the afternoon. It was quiet
and all believed that “… this looks pretty calm.”
At a press conference, Romney announced that
the troops would not be ordered to Detroit from
Mount Clemens. Cavanagh disagreed, fearing
renewed violence when darkness fell, and that is
what happened.
Romney back-peddled the next day, Cavanagh
said, and “blamed me for sandbagging him. He
accused me of planting this stuff [critical news
stories about Romney.]”
The mayor said he believed there was genuine
concern about sending in federal troops for “this
kind of domestic outbreak.” But, he added, “I’m
not so naïve as to assume that politics didn’t play
a part,” but politics was not the “paramount con-
sideration.”
Cavanagh also described the National Guard as
“highly disorganized and not very well trained.”
Cavanagh said there was some “indirect” criti-
cism aimed at him for “not shooting” looters,
stating, “There would have been a veritable blood
bath … had we gone charging in firing into mobs
of people.”
Besides the riot, Cavanagh suffered other
political setbacks, including a high-profile messy
divorce, and then he split the Democratic Party
by challenging former Gov. G. Mennen Williams
in a failed run for the U.S. Senate in 1966. It was
all too much and he decided in 1969 to forego a
run for a third term.
Of all his political problems, the riot was the
most grievous wound. The interview with the
Johnson Library provides insights into the han-
dling of the riot and its politics. It does not cap-
ture the toll it took on Cavanagh personally. •

Berl Falbaum of West Bloomfield is a veteran journalist and
author.

